Statistics show that more than 50,000 websites are hacked every day. Since WordPress is used by more than 30% of websites worldwide, it’s no surprise that hackers often target this platform. Still, the fact that WordPress websites are often hacked doesn’t make it any better when it happens to you.
We will do our best to tell you how to stop attacks from happening, so you don’t have to fix a site that has already been hacked.
We’ll talk about some of the most common WordPress security problems and give you ideas on keeping your site safe.
Exactly how secure is WordPress?
Hacking usually happens not because a website is popular but because it has the potential to be hacked in the first place. In fact, most of the attacks on websites that happen every day are done automatically by bots. Hackers program these bots to look for holes in your security and then attack when they find one. In short, your website can be vulnerable to all security threats, no matter how big, popular, or visible.
If WordPress is attacked, it’s mainly because its users haven’t set up protection. Most WordPress security problems happen because of a hosting platform that isn’t safe or because of plugins and themes that aren’t safe. Before learning to protect your site well, you need to know about some of the security problems many WordPress site owners face.
Brute force attacks
Multiple attempts are made to get a username and password in a brute-force attack, usually done by bots. These bots try different combinations of letters, numbers, and commonly used passwords repeatedly until one works. Because there is no limit to how many times you can try to log in, it’s easy to break into a WordPress site. Unfortunately, brute force attacks can cause problems in other ways as well. They can also cause problems, such as a server system that gets too busy, which could lead your host to shut down your account.
The exploitation of sensitive files, SQL injections and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
All plugins and themes for WordPress are built on PHP. Since not all PHP developers have the same skill level, sometimes mistakes happen in the code. Hackers look for these mistakes in PHP files that are important to a site to get in.
Attacking MySQL databases (WordPress uses MySQL to manage its databases) or using XSS are two other ways to get into a website. This last one is one of the most common security holes in WordPress plugins. It works by injecting JavaScript code that isn’t safe. When the person in question opens the pages in their browser, they will also load these unsafe scripts without their knowledge. This is how the attacker can get information from the target’s browser.
Malware
Another common thing that can go wrong with your WordPress site is this. Malware is harmful software made to break into your website and make your system sick.
If you don’t update WordPress to the latest version, malware attacks can easily happen.
Pharma hacks, Backdoor attacks, Malicious redirects, and Driven by downloads are some of the most common malware that can damage WordPress sites.
What you can do to secure your WordPress website
Despite all the problems we’ve discussed, WordPress could still be a reasonably strong and secure CMS. Here are a few techniques you may use to increase the defense of your WordPress website against various threats.
Make sure to have a secure hosting platform
Most attacks happen because the hosting isn’t good enough. So, choosing a trustworthy and reliable hosting service is one of the essential things you can do to protect your website. Our main piece of advice is to stay away from shared hosting. The reason is simple: if one site on the hosting platform is attacked, all the other sites on the platform are also at risk.
Instead, choose hosting services that can only handle one website and offer WordPress-specific hosting packages for the best security.
Some hosts can even do security updates for you automatically. You should try out hosting services like BlueHost or Kinsta.
Perform regular updates
Updating your WordPress is important for many reasons, including getting new features and better code. Another reason is that security bugs from older versions are often fixed when new versions come out (sometimes, they release entire updates aimed solely at security). So, if you keep your website up-to-date, it will be much less likely that bots and other malicious software can use your website data.
Install a security plugin
It’s always a good idea to take extra safety steps to ensure your website is even safer. You can do this by putting in one of the many security plugins for WordPress. Many security plugins can stop brute force attacks in addition to being able to scan effectively and protect against all common threats.
Some even track how many people visit your site, offer security key protection, and stop bots from going there. Just make sure the plugin you want to install comes from a reliable source, and you’re good to go.
Conclusion
The first step to ensuring your website is safe is knowing about the threats and problems that could happen. After that, you should use some of the strategies we’ve talked about above. To improve the security of your website, even more, you should make regular copies of it. Also, making your passwords stronger and staying away from sources you don’t trust can ensure your site is as safe as it can be.
The truth is that malicious attacks can happen to your website no matter how well you try to protect it. The internet is dangerous by nature, and this is just one of the risks of being online. But if you take some of these precautions, you can make it much less likely that something terrible will happen.
